SHANNON: Why do you think 100 million people on YouTube/internet viewed Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain's Got Talent?
SEAN: Comments from the judges like, “Reeling from shock... Biggest wake-up call ever... A complete privilege... Extraordinary,” demand a bigger, more precise and important question: ‘Why were most of us immediately brought to tears by her performance? - And not tears of sadness or joy, but of relief and amazement’. At the same time scrutiny of the very dark hour our world faces stays mostly quiet - Palestinian babies exploding daily, Pakistan villages smart bombed, Dyncorp and Halliburton sex slave trade scandals, Iraqi torture camps, skyrocketing unemployment, home invasion and seizures by the banksters, food shortages, vaccine induced autism - we are compelled, trained to rush cynically with judgment and insults at the sight of a middle-aged single women with short disorderly hair, frizzy eyebrows and bulky awkward proportions. As certainly as spilled wine will attract pests is as undoubtedly as this dumply shy lady of an inconsequential village would attract rolling eyes and cruel, teasing laughter from the awaiting audience. But Susan stood down the crowd’s predetermined ridicule with a ‘cheeky grin’. She knew better. She had a gift to share. Her secure, ardent, 'smashing' voice hits the microphone and tears stream our faces because we are both relieved and amazed to find our programming was wrong. Innocence isn’t ugly. ... If Susan’s performance wasn’t a touch from God, an angel reminding us all that the voice within is right, that life isn’t a beauty pageant, life is instead a pageant of beauty, all of us blessed, then why did it feel that way? 100 million watched to hear God answer our desperate prayers during these jagged corrupt times, begging for a guardian spirit, a guiding influence, a healing messenger, an angel of mercy. Thank you God for your grace! May we recognize it! May we never again judge religious, political, social, ethnic, cosmetic, and class differences with unwarranted taunts, bullets and cancer shots! May we have the strength to seek conscious change over conformity! May our silent prayers of dissent against tyranny become acts of civil disobedience!
SHANNON: Indeed! The shock of Susan’s voice melted away many layers of joust in me to find rivers of awe. What a triumph! She endured a less than opportune life to send one heavenly cheer to all of us. Bless her!

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“Just before she (Susan Boyle) launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.” - Piers Morgan, Britain’s Got Talent Judge

“Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances. ... There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example.” - Susan Boyle, The Washington Post

“Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” - Albert Einstein

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.” - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws.” - Abraham Lincoln

“If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” - Edward Louis Bernays

“I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.

And still I dream he'll come to me
And we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather...

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.”